Output Styles

Output styles change how Qwen Code writes its responses — the tone, the amount of narration, how much it explains — without changing what it can do. A style is a named block of instructions layered onto the built-in system prompt, and the model is reminded of the active style on every turn so it holds up over long sessions.

Built-in styles

Style	What it does
default	No extra style — the standard prompt.
Concise	Answers first, with no preamble, narration, or closing recap. The work stays as thorough as ever; error reports and safety confirmations keep their full content.
Proactive	Starts work immediately and prefers a stated assumption over a question on low-risk decisions. Does not change what is allowed: the approval mode and confirmation rules still apply in full.
Explanatory	Adds short educational “Insight” notes about the codebase and the implementation choices alongside the work.
Learning	Collaborative learn-by-doing: hands you small, meaningful pieces of code to write (marked `TODO(human)`), then waits. Skipped in headless runs, which cannot wait for you.

Choosing a style

Run /output-style to open a picker, or set one directly:


/output-style Concise
/output-style default   # back to no style

The change applies to the running session immediately — the system prompt is rebuilt in place, so the next turn already answers in the new style — and it is persisted for future sessions. If a trusted project setting currently owns general.outputStyle, the command updates that project setting; otherwise it updates your user setting. Style names are case-insensitive.

You can also set the style without the command:

Settings: "general": { "outputStyle": "Concise" } in settings.json (user or project scope). The value is a built-in or custom style name. A hand edit takes effect on the next start.
One run: qwen -p "..." --output-style Concise overrides the setting for that run. See Headless Mode.

Custom styles

A custom style is a Markdown file whose body is the style’s instructions. Put it in one of two directories:

Location	Scope
`~/.qwen/output-styles/<name>.md`	Your styles, available in every project
`<project>/.qwen/output-styles/*.md`	The project’s styles, read only when the workspace is trusted

Trust is checked whenever the style is used, not only when the file is read, so revoking trust mid-session stops a project style from shaping the conversation.


---
name: Reviewer
description: Reviews code and reports findings without editing anything
keep-coding-instructions: false
---
 
You are reviewing, not implementing. Read the code the user points you at, list concrete findings ordered by severity, and never edit files unless the user asks for a fix.

The frontmatter is optional. Each field has a default:

name — the style’s name, used with /output-style <name> and in general.outputStyle. Defaults to the file name without .md. default is reserved.
description — the one-line summary shown in the picker. Defaults to the first line of the body.
keep-coding-instructions — true keeps the built-in software-engineering workflow guidance in the prompt alongside your style; false drops that one section, for a style whose work is not coding. A file that says nothing inherits the value of the built-in style it overrides, so rewriting concise.md changes the wording without dropping that guidance; a file with no built-in counterpart defaults to false. Everything else in the built-in prompt — identity, safety rules, tool guidance — stays in force under every style.

Custom styles appear in the /output-style picker after the built-ins, labelled with their source, and are re-read each time the picker opens or a name is given, so a new file needs no restart. Names are matched case-insensitively and must be unique: a project style overrides a user style of the same name, and either overrides a built-in of that name. A file that cannot be loaded is skipped and reported in the debug log while the other files still load — an empty body, an invalid name, a file larger than 25 kB (a style is a prompt, not a document), one that is not UTF-8 text, or one whose whole body is an HTML comment. HTML comments are stripped from the body, so a note to your teammates is not sent to the model.

A style file may only read itself: a project file that is a symlink is skipped, a user file may be a symlink into your own home (a dotfiles setup) but not outside it, and a hard link is refused at either level.

Custom styles are ignored in --bare and --safe-mode, which keep the built-ins only.

Scope and interactions

A style layers onto the built-in prompt. When --system-prompt or QWEN_SYSTEM_MD replaces the prompt entirely, the style (and its per-turn reminder) is not applied.
Styles apply to the main conversation only. Subagents run their own system prompts, and an arena peer inherits the session’s style only when that style keeps the coding instructions — a peer is judged on the diff it produces, so it never runs with the software-engineering guidance removed.
--bare and --safe-mode ignore the setting and do not allow /output-style changes.
Changing the style mid-session invalidates the cached prompt prefix once; after that, caching works as usual.

Styles adjust tone and workflow, not knowledge or permissions. For project conventions the model should always know, use context files (QWEN.md); for a one-off addition to the prompt, use --append-system-prompt.